The Canaries
After a traumatic start to 2026, A nice, 20-night cruise, while the Azura relocates from the Canaries to the Mediterranean was just what was required.
Once again, Podge & Tubbs return to their other favourite ship, The Azura. This one however was a lot longer than the last 7-night cruise. This one was a whole 20 night long cruise with an itinerary of such promise.
As before, the cruise started with a flight to Tenerife. Once there the itinerary was, Madeira, Fuerteventura, La Palma, Tenerife, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Valencia, Barcelona, Naples, Palermo, and Valletta from where they flew back to the UK with BA (Business Class of course).
The flight itself was a good flight, departing a little late but otherwise no issues. Their arrival however was when the problems started!
As before, what should have have happened was that on landing at Tenerife, they would make their way through security and Passport Control then onto waiting buses to be whisked off to the cruise terminal where they they would check in, go though Cruise Security and board the lovely Azura. From there they would check in at the muster station then go directly to their quarters (suite of course).
What actually happened was a little different. They got off the plane just fine. Once inside the terminal, Tubbs must have had a preminition as she insisted that both visited the rest rooms before heading to security. Once comfortable, they made their way past a security guard and joined the back of a queue, a seemingly endless queue. It transpired that before going to passport control, it would be necessary for all non-EU citizens to scan their passports and have their fingerprints scanned. The trouble was that their plane wasn’t the only plane-full of of non-EU citizens to have landed and all had to the same thing. The Brits love to queue and are good at queueing but this queue was beyond the pale, Because of the lack of fully functioning scanning machine attended by just one fraught attendant. Eventually however, Podge and Tubbs reached the machines to find a couple of fellow passengers helping others to navigate the truculent scanning machines. Scans complete, they made their way to join another queue to have their passports scanned by better behaved scanning machines: It was just inept passengers causing the queues here. Once scanned, they [all] then needed to go to the passport checking desk where the passports were checked and stamped and free to enter Tenerife. With great relief, they collected their bags and went through the terminal to the ‘waiting’ buses. The ‘waiting’ buses however were notable by their absence. With the final 17 passengers (including Podge and Tubbs) complete with luggage waiting for another bus they were all told there would be one along in 10-minutes. After 15 minutes, they told it would be another 10 minutes. After a further 15 minutes they were told told there was no bus! They would all need to pile into taxis which the poor bus guides would help with though looking at the every growing taxi queue their confidence of a speedy departure was extremely low. But eventually they managed to get them all on the move and finally reached the cruise terminal just before 21:00. Podge and Tubbs finally checked in, went though Cruise Security and boarded the lovely Azura then went directly to their quarters (suite of course). Check in at muster stations would be the following day as the Azura in port for 2-days. By this time, the thought of eating anything was too much so they went to the Glass House for a drink or three before making their way back to their bed where they crashed out but not before they swearing that this would be the last fly cruise to the canaries they will ever do. And that was the end of their first day, or was it?
At 03:00 they were abruptly awoken by a tannoy announcement in the cabin (all cabins, not just theirs) calling the fire response team as there was or had been a fire in the kitchen. Podge looked at Tubbs, Tubbs looked at Podge and both asked each other, will this cruise ever start? Then, 15 minutes later there was another tannoy announcement from the Captain sounding more than a little frustrated apologising for the disturbance and that the ‘fire’ had been dealt with. Podge wondered if it had been more than the fire that had been dealt with. Podge and Tubbs went back to sleep. Poor Podge. Poor Tubbs.
The Adventures of Podge & Tubbs 